I honestly don’t know where some of these goofy ideas come from. People are going along fine, then someone says something on the internet, and all of a sudden everyone is dumping olive oil in their beer. If your processes are working for you, stop looking for evidence to change to something else. In this case, it should be pretty evident whether you accidentally dropped all the calcium out of your wort. If you don’t have the signs of it, then chances are it didn’t happen. Theoretical is one thing, but if you have actual empirical evidence to the contrary, just believe your own senses.
Good to know!
I agree, with the exception of when a piece of information comes from a credible source such as John Palmer (where the phos reference comes from). If someone sees a wild theory online there is good reason to doubt it, but when it comes from a credible source there is less of a reason for dispute.
Good point on continuing a process that works. I don’t have the most refined palate so it may just be that the lactic is adding a flavor I can’t detect. If I can find a more neutral acid (like phos) to use I’d really like to try it. Most of the local breweries are using phosphoric.
Everyone’s process and understanding keeps evolving as more information becomes available. I figure if I can find a better method for acidifying the mash then why not consider alternatives? Gordon, I’m sure that’s one of the reasons you’re publishing a book; which by the way, I can’t wait to get my hands on!
Probably from this infamous reaction:
2 H3PO4 + 3 Ca(OH)2 –> 6 H(OH) + Ca3(PO4)2
To be clear, I am not saying that the calcium phosphate precipitation reaction does not take place.
The gist of my message above is that adding phosphoric acid does not appreciably change the amount of phosphate ion in the mash. This is due to the malt contributing on the order of 1% phosphate to the mash (this is about 10,000 ppm) and an acid addition only being maybe a 100 ppm. So the added phosphate doesn’t really change things appreciably. Therefore, the additional potential to precipitate out more calcium is pretty small.
Right; neither am I. But what’s that got to do with what’s actually taking place in the mash? The “goofy idea” is that you can take a perfectly reasonable concept and then totally misapply it in practice. Just because a basic fact is true doesn’t mean that subsequent statements are also true, particularly if they ignore physical evidence to the contrary. This isn’t a new problem; it’s been around long enough that there is a Latin term for it: non sequitur. It’s also how people wind up with beers that taste like Alka Seltzer.
Gordon, I love you…no, not like THAT! 
Even when something comes from a “credible source” you do yourself a disservice to blindly accept it without trusting your own observations and experience. Although the source may have established credibility in the past om some things, there’s no absolute guarantee that source is accurate on all things all the time. You need to use your own experience and common sense to see how that advice relates to you.
Or to put it another way, just because a reaction happens in a test tube doesn’t mean it happens (or matters) under relevant conditions. It’s a big problem in medical research, one that too many people forget. Ultimately your in vitro results have to be tested in situ.
I agree. It’s like my experience with Fermcap. Many experts on here recommended it, I bought a BIG bottle of it and it’s a total waste of money, in my opinion. However, I have no one to blame by myself for buying the large size.
Give it another try, it works for many of us in practice. Feel free to ask for usage recommendations if you think that will help. If it still doesn’t work for you . . . where do you live? If you’re close I’ll buy it off of you, I love the stuff. :) I use it in the boil and during fermentation.
Thanks, but I already threw it away. I tried it several times and with different amounts, some at almost double the recommended ones. It would help a little but not enough that I felt was worth having something more than the 4 basic ingredients in my beer.
Bummer. Sorry it didn’t work for you.
Tom, Gordon, Martin and Denny, thanks for the well stated points and advice! Sometimes I have a tendency to focus on the wrong things in brewing and over look the things that matter most. When I run out of lactic acid I’ll give phosphoric a shot!
Calcium is typically limited in tap water around here and I see plenty of beers that exhibit the physical evidence that they probably would have benefited from a little more Calcium. I couldn’t, in good conscience, recommend that brewers here add more phosphate, instead of Calcium Chloride or Sulfate.
I’d be curious to see the evidence that Phosphoric Acid doesn’t remove calcium from the mash, though.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m misunderstanding . . . why is it either/or? Why can’t it be both? If you had water that was low in calcium but high in bicarbonate, couldn’t you add CaCl to bump up the Ca while adding phosphoric acid to acidify the mash in a pale beer? Although if your water lacks calcium then maybe it is low in lots of things and doesn’t actually need acidification anyway.
As far as phosphoric acid not removing calcium from the mash, I think the point is that there is already a lot of phosphate in the mash from the malt, so adding a little more isn’t going to impact the precipitation much. So it’s not “does it or doesn’t it”, but “does it matter”? I never acidify my mash and always add calcium, so I don’t really know, but Martin and Gordon’s points make sense from a chemistry standpoint.
If you throw a rock in the ocean, does it raise the water level? Then my God, we’re all going to be flooded!
See the analogy?
Phosphoric acid removing calcium doesn’t mean that you don’t have calcium for brewing. The evidence is that the resulting beer doesn’t show any signs of a calcium deficiency.
I would rarely need to add acid after adding an appropriate amount of calcium, so it would mostly be an either-or situation. Also, our local water has about 4 ppm calcium. Maybe that’s why adding something that would remove additional calcium seems like a goofy idea, to me. But it also means I don’t have any personal experience with the effects of adding phosphoric acid, either.
I worry that this argument sounds an awful lot like the “malt converts completely in xx minutes” argument. Well, your mash may convert that fast, but his doesn’t. You may find that removing additional calcium by adding phosphoric acid doesn’t hurt your beer, but that might not be true for the guy with 4, 10 or maybe even 50 ppm calcium in his water.
Really, I have no problem with adjusting the pH with phosphoric acid. Just the statement that it doesn’t precipitate calcium without any evidence to support that claim.
The stoichiometry is relatively simple, so we can figure out how much calcium could be lost, which might be helpful. How much phosphoric acid are you typically adding?
Maybe 1/4 to 1/2 a tsp in 5 gallons of RO water.
That sounds odd to me. I usually brew with RO water adjusted to 50 ppm Ca with CaCl or more. I have to add acid to most mashes to get a pH around 5.4 (measured by a freshly calibrated pH meter).
I don’t think anyone is saying adding marginal phosphoric acid precipitates no marginal calcium but rather that it is immaterial. When you have breweries like Sierra Nevada produces hundreds of thousands of barrels of technically great beer made with phosphoric acid that displays no symptoms of low calcium, the burden of proof for the claim that phosphoric acid should not be used lies with the claimant.
I can see where both sides are coming from and can see the validity of a “fart in the wind” argument. Maybe that’s where the sulfur comes from on all my beers with WLP830? It’s gonna take lagering for that aroma to dissipate. Now that you’ve all told me to challenge everything, I don’t believe any of you! ;D
What concentration? I can find 10% Phos at my local shop, but not 75% that most of the brew pubs would use. I wonder if this is another safety consideration for the home brewer?